


In Wingèd Void

by mothra_leo



Category: GODZILLA Trilogy (Anime 2017)
Genre: Extradimensional, Gen, Haruo accidentally an afterlife, M/M, Metphies deliberately an afterlife, Navel-Gazing, Psychic Abilities, Weird spacetime stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 10:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17445158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothra_leo/pseuds/mothra_leo
Summary: It is the end, and Haruo is happy. Godzilla will vanish along with the burden of the past. Ghidorah's intrusion will be stopped, and Metphies' ghost will stop haunting him.It turns out that he's alreadyseentoo much to escape entirely.





	In Wingèd Void

 

In the last moment, Haruo smiles as he approaches Godzilla, enveloped in a brief moment of final, all-accepting contentment. It is the end, and he is happy. Godzilla will vanish along with the burden of the past. Ghidorah's intrusion will be stopped, and Metphies' ghost will stop haunting him.

He will have peace.

In the next moment, everything exists at once. Nothing exists. Both of these things are true, and it’s utterly unfair. Haruo can’t cope with it, and he shrinks into himself in panic.

 

It takes a while (if it's time that is passing) for Haruo to understand how to perceive his surroundings (he's not sure it counts as 'space', but that's as close a parallel as he can handle at the moment).

Ghidorah is there. He is inside it, he thinks. That is the whole of existence around him, extending vast beyond Haruo's perception, iterating upon itself into shadow and sunflares. Matter spins up and away in patterns and at scales that Haruo can't comprehend.

Haruo does not know how long he watches it. It hurts, looking (for whatever value of 'look' this is) and he does not know how to stop  _ seeing it _ .

For eons of untime, there is only the golden-rifted void scraping at his ragged sense of selfhood and-

 

Metphies is still there. He can see Haruo. He is very close by; Haruo wonders at how he can be so certain that this entity is Metphies-and then realizes that Metphies is crowding in, around his self, helping him filter things out. Maybe. He doesn't like it, but it's better than the alternative.

It is better. He learns about his senses, slowly. They have bodies, if Haruo cares to think that they do. They aren't real at all; yes, they're material as any body Haruo's ever had (he's only had the one, of course), and reaching out, he feels Metphies' chest solid under his hand; but they're only shadows of the realm he's in now; this place is more than solid matter. More complex, more peculiar, more eternal.

There are millions of others in this place with them. Others who have died; were taken in, Haruo thinks. Ghidorah's harvest-or the Exif's. Ghidorah takes no notice of him; not yet, and he doesn't like to think about what would happen if it did.

Everything's still sliding sickeningly under him, and he starts to place the feeling as part of the illusion of time that allows him to make sense of this place.

 

“You made it,” Metphies says, a smile on his face as serene as Haruo's ever seen on him.

“I died,” Haruo says. He doesn't know if he speaks, or merely hears himself.

“I thought that you might shut me out entirely,” Metphies says. “I thought, perhaps, you'd be stubborn enough to destroy yourself in totality. But you made it. Don’t think of yourself as dead. You’re here, with me.”

Haruo presses his lips. There's parts of him missing, he knows this. Memories in tatters, feelings that aren't quite in the right place, but he remembers enough. 'Made it' is not what he'd call this. 'Here' is not a place he wanted to be.

But he is here. In this outer void, some higher order of dimension, the “other universe” that the Exif had discovered, that Metphies had made contact with. The place that Metphies had tried to force Haruo to  _ see _ . Perhaps it worked to a point; it would explain the voices, the pain in his eye, just before his death. The mad cackling in his head that had driven him onwards to meet Godzilla, in the ironic hope of escaping it. Haruo hadn't expected to find part of himself remaining with Ghidorah; but perhaps that was the nature of  _ seeing _ it.

“I was afraid I couldn't save you.” Metphies murmurs. Haruo realizes he's still touching Metphies' chest, and pulls his hand away; Metphies reaches down and cups Haruo's cheek with his hand.

Some part of Haruo really did get taken in by that monster, then, the way Metphies wanted. This part of him, now, exists outside the Universe.

How horrible.

Metphies got the eternity he wanted for them. He didn't completely lose. Haruo wonders if he can resent Metphies like he feels he should.

Hate feels like something he's left behind.

 

“Does time pass here?” He asks, even though he knows it does. In a way. It also doesn't.

“Hn.” Metphies almost shrugs. The expressiveness sits strangely on him. “It needn't. But it can, if you will it, Haruo.”

“Are we in hell?” Haruo knows his own answer to that, too; but he isn't sure what to do about it. He's afraid he never will. He's afraid he'll have forever to contemplate the nature of what he's lost. Death. Time. Meaning.

Haruo can feel his being blur around the edges, his incomplete parts seeking completion. He isn't whole; he's only most of a sentience, one that never quite finished its transition before he stopped the act himself. Metphies is all too eager to offer him comfort, and Haruo lacks all the senses necessary to understand just how they are interacting in this higher-order space.

 

“Is this what you called saving people?” He wonders how long Metphies has been 'here', or linked to here, experiencing forever. Since Haruo felt him die, Metphies' eyes already pits of gore? Or before that? During the sacrifices, when Metphies revealed his intentions and called Ghidorah into reality? Or back before Haruo ever met him; had he sold his soul to the creature even then?

“Are you not freed?” Metphies asks. “Free from want, and death; free from Time and pain and the need to fight-yes.” He starts with the even certainty that Haruo used to like in him and, now, finds unnerving. “You are saved. I have saved you.” He's losing that cool facade, emphasis edging into his tone.

“You could have helped us,” Haruo lances at him. “You knew the nature of what Godzilla was, and instead of helping us stop the monster you did  _ this  _ to me-”

“Why?” Metphies demands. “Help end Godzilla? Knowing that, to do so, you and everyone you fought so hard over should also die? You would have me end your miserable existences in that miserable universe and deny you all your only chance at survival?”

As if his motivations and means were  _ justified _ . “When there is no way to prevent Death, you would have had me throw away those I love, ignore a way to preserve you outside of it?”

“You call this preservation?!” Haruo retorts. “Where am I? What is this?! I didn't want this!” He had finally put an end to things-- to the long dreadful journey, the hopeless battle, to betrayal-and now, he has nothing for it but horror.

Metphies looks miserable-and angry.

He had cultivated Haruo's hate, drawn out his anger, and Haruo shudders realizing how very much of those things Metphies must have been hiding to possess that very same power he'd tried to give Haruo. Successfully given Haruo.

It didn't matter how distant these events were now, Haruo told himself. He had to remember that betrayal. He had to keep himself together.

He can’t change his situation. He can only fence himself off from Metphies, try to keep them separate. Surround himself in hedgehog wavelengths and shards of fledgling nothingness and try to keep some semblance of a boundary between their existences.

 

The effort makes it hard to focus.

When Haruo was alive, ultimately, the only thing that drove him on was his purpose. Save as many as he could. Protect those he loved. Kill Godzilla, as if that would really solve all their problems.

It would have helped, he thinks, even knowing what he does about human nature.

His purposes are moot, now. Not only finished, perhaps even won; but he has an eternity to contemplate the fact that there is nothing more. What is he now?

He really is in Hell, he thinks. A fractal underworld of the forever-frozen, always-moving. The eternal thinkers, unable to do anything but-

He is forgetting how not to  _ see _ , and the golden void erodes unceasingly around his ragged edges. He’s losing himself.

“Look at me,” Metphies is saying, calling past the feeble barriers Haruo is struggling to keep.

 

Metphies corrals Haruo's nonexistent chin so that he has to look into Metphies' nonexistent eyes, undamaged and green. It’s not just visual input; the action brings Metphies’ being close to his again, lets him surround Haruo, sharpen their beings simply by the contrast of presence.

“I hate this,” Haruo says, though there is no edge to his words. Instead, he feels something more like fear. Emptiness. He didn't want this, but he's here, and he isn't made for this kind of existence. Metphies' presence presses even closer, self enveloping self, and Haruo feels himself tremble in the not-quite-hug. He feels the ability to connect, the psychic strength that Metphies had hidden so skillfully before (and had he, really? Metphies must have used it, time and time again-to know, to pressure, and Haruo had taken it for understanding and his own fondness and affection-)

“If purpose is what you need,” Metphies tells him, “Let me give you that, Haruo.”

He wants to deny Metphies, but Haruo wonders why he should bother. There's nothing left for him to defend from Metphies. Haruo's already here, without hope of return, and no desire to try leaving; what's he going to do, leave the way Ghidorah did?

Haruo hasn't lost, after all. The real world was saved for the people he wanted to save it for. If Metphies wants to guide him here, on Metphies' own terms, well, Haruo isn't ready to take his own agency in this place yet. He just wants to rest. To have peace.

“Look at me,” Metphies repeats.

So Haruo does.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah I wrote this the night after I saw World Eater. It's cathartic in nature--I honestly did not expect Metphies to do-- everything he did. I'm aware that Metphies ended up being a scheming manipulative bastard who chose to get a lot of people killed. Haruo learned better in canon and doesn't deserve to have to deal with this.  
> The whole concept of Ghidorah is utterly amaze-horrifying and the idea that the Exif (and Haruo because of his situation at the end of World Eater) can percieve Ghidorah, suggested to me that they too made it a little outside known reality. It's just that that wouldn't fit with the thematic escape from the whole hatred/destruction bit on Haruo's part.


End file.
